What the Duck?
by Smoltenica
Summary: Combine 'Sleeping Beauty' with 'Star Wars' with 'I Can Jump Puddles' with 'Monty Python' with a healthy dose of C. S. Lewis and a touch of Garth Nix, and what do you get? Pandemonium, that's what. [Rated for safety?]


"Where did you get that?" asked Andrea as Erik dragged the old wooden chest into the living room. It still had dirt on it and some large clods fell on the carpet. Erik trod them in, but for once his sister didn't complain.

"I was digging a hole to bury a time capsule in the back garden," Erik explained. "My spade hit something hard and this was it."

He brushed the dirt away from the front of the chest with the front of his T-shirt. Instead of a keyhole, there was a rectangular silver plate with five small bronze buttons recessed into it, each button engraved with its own symbol. There was a lion's head; an eagle's claw; a weird slit-pupilled eye; what looked like a section of a crocodile's rippled back; and a small fruit tree bearing tiny diamond-shaped fruit.

"Which one will I press first?" asked Erik.

"Don't press any!" said Andrea forcefully.

"It might just be an old chest," said Erik.

"Not from Grand-dad Ben's garden," said Andrea. "That chest is magic, and we don't know what kind or how dangerous it is. We should leave it alone."

Erik nodded as if to agree.

Then he suddenly bent down and pressed one of the buttons.

"Erik!" she screamed. "What do you think you're-"

But she got no further, for the button mutated, and an orange mitt flew up and hit her in the face.

"Fifty points!" said Erik gleefully, reading an instructions manual which appeared from nowhere. "See that, Andrea? It got you right on the nose!"

"I didn't have to see it, I feltit!" Her hand flew to her nose, which had swollen to the size of a tennis ball. "What have you _done_?"

"Oh, you should never squeeze a weasel for you might displease the weasel, and don't ever squeeze a weasel by the tail," Erik sang, caressing the chest and jumping up. "See, Andrea? It's just a big joke."

"Nothing from Grand-dad Ben's garden is 'just a joke'," she said furiously, gesturing at her nose. "You call _this _a joke?"

"Yes!"

And before Erik could say anything more, she was shaking him till his tonsils rattled.

"YOU SELFISH PIG! DON'T YOU CARE WHAT WILL HAPPEN? THIS ISN'T YOURS TO OPEN AND PLAY WITH AT WILL! THERE'S SOMETHING FUNNY ABOUT THAT CHEST!"

She aimed a kick at him, but whereby chance or bitter curse, Erik ducked, the chest jerked up, and her kick landed on a silver button.

The silver button engraved with an eagle.

"_Holly!"_

"_What, dear?" Holly asked tiredly, as she set the table for dinner. _

"_I've made an eagle!" he crowed. "Look!"_

_Holly sighed. "Ben, it's silver," she said, and he laughed._

"_Perfect for this."_

_He slipped a yellow and a green ring over its head and muttered something. Holly looked at him queerly, and there was a burst of green light…_

Mouldy cheese fell from the roof, pelting Andrea and Erik, flying around until it formed a huge grey-yellow ring.

"Don't touch it," she whispered.

"I hate cheese," Erik mumbled.

"**_Touch the spindle!"_** a voice commanded.

"The spindle? What spindle!"

"… **_I mean, touch the mouldy cheese ring!"_**

"Oh, _I _see!" said Erik, and good naturedly stuck his hand out. "How do you do?"

"_**Good-o, my young protégée!" **_

Something about the voice was familiar. Sort of like-

"_**Touch the mouldy cheese ring! Touch it, I say!" **_

Not just _sort of. _It was _so_ like Grand-dad Ben! He _had_ been the erratic Uncle Andrew's student.

And then, in the midst of her thoughts, Erik grabbed her hand and touched the cheese ring.

"_Great Jehosephat!" _

"_Stop screeching! Flying is wonderful!" _

"_Ben -"_

"_I love to laugh! Ha ha ha ha!" _

"_Flying? Laughing? Ben- ARGH!" _

_They were falling…_

_Falling…_

Andrea stirred and opened her eyes. She was in some kind of a large stone barn, by the looks of things. And ahead of her was a blonde girl holding a beacon. The scene looked oddly familiar.

"Hello, and welcome- welcome to the Castle Anthrax!" a cheery voice cried.

"Who are you?" she whispered.

The blonde girl stopped smiling.

"They sent us a girl!" she gasped, and clapped her hands. "Midget! Creeper!"

"Yes, Sir Zoot?"

"Tell the boys to send her away!"

Someone clicked their fingers, and-

"Hey, Andrea! We're in a wood!"

A soft green light came down on her from above. She didn't seem to be standing on anything, though, or sitting, or lying.

"Andrea!"

He sounded muffled as people sounded when they were talking to someone under water. Underwater?  
She plunged up, and scrambled onto the smooth grassy ground. To her surprise, she was neither dripping wet nor panting for breath. She was perfectly dry, standing by the edge of a small pool in a wood. The trees grew so high and were so leafy she could see no sky, save for a few shafts of light. It was all silent and peaceful, and there were more pools, surrounded by trees- and more- and more.

"Where are we?" she whispered. She didn't seem able to speak above a whisper.

"Look, Andrea, I can jump puddles!" Erik exclaimed, and leapt over a pool.

She grabbed him. "Don't jump into the pools anymore," she said weakly.

But Erik jumped again, she still holding him, and they fell- into the pool from which she had emerged.

_Shakily, Holly looked up. "Where are we, Ben?"_

"_Why, somewhere splendid!"_

"_Ben, we're- we're standing in a pool."_

"_How splendid! Let's jump in more!"_

"_NO!" _

"_Well, just this one pool, Holly dear?"_

_He was using puppy-dog eyes on her. Her thirty-seven year-old husband was employing puppy dog eyes on her. _

"_Well, fine," she sighed._

"_On the count of three- one- two- three!"_

_They jumped... and fell-_

Into a living room.

A very familiar looking living room.

"This is- home?" Andrea gasped.

"Yep," said Erik. "This is the scratching on the wall I made when I was four, and Grand-dad Ben's chest is-"

He pointed to an empty space.

"Well, Grand-dad Ben's chest _was _there," he amended.

Andrea didn't know whether to scream or laugh or cry or throw a fit, to hug Erik or shake him senseless. It was gone, that horrible chest was gone!

But then- it was gone. No more spinning into rich, serene woods. It was gone.

A piece of paper drifted down. What it was, what it meant, no one asked. They knew what it meant, and that was enough.

_It is over._

"Well," said Erik, "you can't deny that was a journey and a half."

Andrea grinned. "Even if you were a typical little brother."

"And you were a moody teenage sister."

They laughed.

"Maybe it didn't happen," Andrea suggested as they went outside.

Erik scoffed. "If it didn't happen, why's your nose the size of a tennis ball?"

Her hand flew to her still-massive nose.

Erik grinned and ran away.

And a million light years away, in a galaxy far, far away, a young Luke Skywalker bent over what appeared to be a very old wooden chest…

_---_

_A/N: I wasn't really sure where to put this. I wrote it for a competition, carrying on from some few sentences that Garth Nix wrote. Then I decided to put in as many inter-textual references as possible, and by the end, I wasn't quite sure what it was. Where to put it- miscellaneous books/film? Well, I went with books because that middle chunk is dedicated v. nicely to C. S. Lewis, but- well, drop a review with what you think._


End file.
